Sequoyah was born around 1776 in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee on the Little Tennessee River, very near this museum. A silversmith who could not read or write English, he spent about twelve years building a writing system for Cherokee, giving a symbol to each syllable. In 1821 he and his daughter Ayoka showed it to Cherokee leaders, and within a few years thousands of Cherokees were literate. The Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, ran its first issue in 1828 in Cherokee and English.
The museum stands on 65 acres of Tellico Lake shore that the Tennessee Valley Authority gave the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians as a permanent easement after the Tellico Dam flooded the valley in 1979 and most of its Cherokee sites with it. Owned and operated by the Eastern Band, it opened in 1986 and installed new exhibits in 2018. Two small theaters tell Sequoyah's story, and an Acorn Press, the kind of press in use when the Phoenix was first printed, shows how a page was set. Outside are a reconstructed blacksmith shop, a shoreline trail and a memorial mound where 191 Cherokee ancestors, moved before the flooding, were reburied. Treat it as the memorial it is.
Two Overhill Cherokee places lie close by. Chota, regarded by Europeans and Cherokees alike as the capital of the Cherokee nation by the mid-eighteenth century, had a council house and about sixty households along the river. Tanasi, whose name the state later took, stood beside it. Memorials to both mark ground the Eastern Band holds.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour